INDIANAPOLIS  Michael Phelps describes the competition program he'll swim in the U.S. championships, today through Saturday at the Indiana University Natatorium, as "relaxed."

With year-out celebrations next week for the Beijing Olympics, where Phelps is likely to carry the highest profile and expectations of any U.S. athlete, he is marking time here by swimming in 10 events. Because of preliminaries, he will be in the competition pool 17 times.

The relaxing part?

Only three of the seven individual events on the program — the 100-meter butterfly, 200 individual medley and 200 freestyle — are among his signature events.

In the others — the 200 breaststroke, the 400 freestyle and the 100 and 200 backstroke — he will be competing against world champions and world recordholders.

In a rare move, Phelps, who won a record seven gold medals in the world championships in March and eight medals overall in the 2004 Olympics, won't be expected to win every time he steps on the blocks.

"Having me swim some 'off' events here, I think, is good for me because it sort of just helps me relax more," Phelps says.

It also helps him work on the pieces of his usual program that have room for improvement, such as the breaststroke for the individual medley.

"One of those things you get locked into, particularly when you're at the top, is you don't want to go to meets and lose," says Phelps' coach, Bob Bowman. "You always want to swim your thing and protect your pet events. Michael's been very good just about not getting into that. …

"He wants to be the best swimmer he can be, and to do that he needs to swim a 200 breast, he needs to swim a 400 free, do some of those other things."

The dabbling begins Tuesday in the 200 breaststroke, where Brendan Hansen awaits.

Not only did Hansen set the world record last year, he wants to rebound from the frustration of not being able to swim in the event in this year's worlds, where a stomach virus grounded him.

"It is motivation to come back," Hansen says. "You train eight months for a race that's two minutes long, and you don't even get to swim it. You have to watch it from a quarantined hotel room on the TV."

Hansen and other top swimmers are straying from their usual course at this nationals, the last major meet before the 2008 Olympic trials. Hansen will cross into Phelps' territory Saturday in the 200 IM.

"I trained a lot of 200 IM this year, because we're just trying to find ways to get faster and we just thought that there's only so much breaststroke you can do and you just burn yourself out," Hansen says. "It was refreshing and fun to do another event."

As fun as it might be for Phelps to race without the usual pressures, he concedes it's "going to be a long week."

"Seventeen races in five days — if I can do that, who knows what else I can do," he says.

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Michael Phelps will swim 17 events in five days at the U.S. championships in Indianapolis this week. Phelps will be taking part in some races not considered his strong suits.

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